IN HAND 'BRITISH COLONIAL DARK LAW' INDIA AT WAR WITH HER OWN PEOPLE

[Under this Act, security forces have at their hands a dangerous mix of carte blanche powers with absolutely no accountability in carrying out their operations once an area is declared as “disturbed”. All the arbitrary and unconstitutional powers conferred to military personnel originate from section 4 of AFSPA. Under section 4(a), even a mere suspicion allows a non-commissioned officer (havaldar) the power to shoot-to-kill any person. He can use force against people who are not presenting any force. He can destroy any property, under section 4(b), if it is suspected of being used as a fortified position. Under section 4(c), anyone can be arrested without warrant if it is suspected that he has committed a cognizable offence. Under section 4(d), force can be used to enter and search any house on suspicion of it being used as a hide out.]

By Shagun Gupta

Manipuri women protesting against the Indian Army as they say the are raped by the latter.

For several months now, Omar Abdullah ,the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir,  has been campaigning to have the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (or AFSPA) withdrawn from the state. For eleven years now, Irom Sharmila Chanu, a social activist from Manipur, has been fasting to have the AFSPA removed from the North-East. An act that was only brought to maintain peace in the so-called “disturbed areas” of the North East and Jammu & Kashmir has a long history of dissent, continued violence and lost voices.

The AFSPA arrived into this world swaddled in acrimony and bitterness, and it has failed to divest itself of those qualities ever since. Indians, under the British  colonial rule were themselves subject to scores of draconian and brutal laws. Interestingly, the origin of the Act in question is in these very same British colonial laws, as Delhi University’s Political Analyst Dr. A. S. Ojha points out, “The AFSPA was borrowed heavily from laws passed during the British colonial era and is a dark legacy”. The parliamentarians took just three hours in the Lok Sabha and four in the Rajya Sabha to approve this hideous Act. Yet, in the 50 years of legislative history, AFSPA is an example of State legitimatized patriarchal violence. Blanket powers are conferred to the Armed Forces and this has ostensibly resulted in innumerable incidents of arbitrary detentions, torture, rape, and lootings etc.

Under this Act, security forces have at their hands a dangerous mix of carte blanche powers with absolutely no accountability in carrying out their operations once an area is declared as “disturbed”. All the arbitrary and unconstitutional powers conferred to military personne l originate from section 4 of AFSPA. Under section 4(a), even a mere suspicion allows a non-commissioned officer (havaldar) the power to shoot-to-kill any person. He can use force against people who are not presenting any force. He can destroy any property, under section 4(b), if it is suspected of being used as a fortified position. Under section 4(c), anyone can be arrested without warrant if it is suspected that he has committed a cognizable offence. Under section 4(d), force can be used to enter and search any house on suspicion of it being used as a hide out.

Section 6 of the act establishes that no legal proceeding can be initiated against any member of the military for their abuses. This section provides legal immunity and leaves the victims of the armed forces with no legal remedy.

These unreasonable powers and the ensuing violence have had terrible repercussions on people of these affected areas. Disenchantment among youths has led them to abandon their dreams and embrace guns, drugs, alcohol and prostitution. When innocent pedestrians are abducted during crackdowns and killed by security forces for promotions or shot in the streets in the name of law enforcement, it is the women who bare the brunt in reconstructing their lives and nurturing their families.

The 2005 Jeevan Reddy Report recommended the repeal of the controversial law. “The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, should be repealed,” it noted in its recommendations. “The Act is too sketchy, too bald and quite inadequate in several particulars”. The report further added that the perception gathered by its members during the course of its findings is that “the Act, for whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness”. But the government has remained silent for over five years now despite these recommendations.

However, it is not just the 2005 Reddy Report but also all the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, and Asia Watch that have implored the Government of India, time and again, to scrap this draconian law.

The level of violations has not only been more severe in the North-East owing to the fact that the act has been present in that area longer than it has in Jammu &Kashmir, however human rights violations in Kashmir itself have been rampant since 1990. The graphic and animate writing of Barbara Crossett in New York Times (India Moves Against Kashmir Rebels, April 7, 1991) is just one instance in this regard. She wrote a heart wrenching recitation regarding how on February 23rd, 1991, over 100 women in Kunan Poshpora, Kupwara were raped by soldiers of 4th Rajputana Rifles from 11 in the night till 9 am of the next day.

The movement against AFSPA has been burning since 1958 itself. There have been numerous student protests, appeals, strikes and mindless violence by agitated youth. And contrary to the popular belief that the act has been able to bring down violence, the extent of violence in the North East and Kashmir has in fact grown since the bill  has been enacted.

The only way to guarantee that the human rights abuses perpetrated by the armed forces in the North East cease is to both repeal the AFSPA and remove the military from playing a civil role in the area. Indeed with 50% of the military forces in India acting in a domestic role, through internal security duties, there is a serious question as to whether the civil authority’s role is being usurped. As long as local police are not relied upon they will not be able to assume their proper role in law enforcement. The continued presence of the military forces prevents the police force from carrying out its jobs. This also perpetuates the justification for the AFSPA.

Moreover, the definition of key phrases, especially “disturbed area” must be clarified. The declaration that an area is disturbed should not be left to the subjective opinion of the Central or State Government. It should have an objective standard which is judicially reviewable. Moreover, the declaration that an area is disturbed should be for a specified amount of time, no longer than six months. Such a declaration should not persist without legislative review.

At a time when the majority is clearly looking for a move to end the AFSPA, few voices linger on supporting the act by means of amendment instead of complete repeal. “Today’s terrorist does not allow you the luxury of a magistrate’s presence”, notes Major General Rajendra Prakash (retd), arguing why AFPSA is necessary. The question is – How does a civilian differentiate between a soldier of the Army and a terrorist in the case of the AFPSA?

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@ Youth Ki Aawaz

INDIAN REVOLUTION BORN IN FARCE ENDS IN ONE

[Mr. Hazare has in the recent past supported the anti-migrant stand of Raj Thackeray, whose outfit, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, has frequently assaulted migrants from north India in Mumbai. The novelist Arundhati Roy, accusing Mr. Hazare of tacitly backing right-wing violence, asked in an article in The Hindu: “Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People?”]

By Manu Joseph

NEW DELHI — Last week in Mumbai, an old man accepted defeat. Anna Hazare sat cross-legged on a stage, enduring yet another fast and staring bleakly at a massive public ground that can fit 100,000 people but was not filling up with supporters as he had expected. Just a few thousand had turned out to watch, a small fraction of the numbers the 74-year-old man had attracted during his earlier fasts in New Delhi to demand the creation of a powerful anti-corruption body called the Lokpal that would primarily roast politicians and bureaucrats. The news media, too, had grown tired of his fasts. All this and poor health forced Mr. Hazare to end his demonstration just a day after he had begun his three-day fast.

As his nine-month-old revolution floundered, the government presented its Lokpal bill in the upper house of the Parliament, where it was defeated by members citing its various provisions and technicalities.

For more than four decades, Parliament members have been trying to create a Lokpal, and they have, not surprisingly, failed, because it would be suicidal for them to succeed. Mr. Hazare has promised to return and fight another day on the streets, which he certainly will do, but with diminished halo and media support. The self-styled revolution of the urban middle class against the corrupt political class elected by the masses appears to be over.

It is over not for want of ideals or self-righteous rage, but because of the way it began, last April, as a spectacle on television news channels. The news anchors projected a man with outdated rustic ideas, including flogging as a cure for alcoholism and chopping off limbs as a punishment for corruption, as the new hero of the middle class.

The Indian news media generate public interest through two distinct kinds of stories — the reporter’s story and the editor’s story. In 2005, when Parliament passed the Right to Information Act, which gave any Indian citizen access to most government documents, it was the result of a long and difficult process of influencing public opinion by reformers and persistent reporters. It was never a sexy story. Beat reporters kept pushing the many aspects of the idea of right to information, and the story slowly made its way from the inside pages to the front pages, from the periphery of television reportage to prime-time discussions. It was the reporter’s story, and at the end of it, all the public was reasonably well informed about the act, why it was important and how they could use it.

The anti-corruption movement, on the other hand, was an editor’s story from the very beginning, from the moment Mr. Hazare arrived in New Delhi in April, sat on a wayside with his supporters and threatened to starve to death if the government did not create the Lokpal.

Television news quickly converted Mr. Hazare into a saint who had arrived from his village to fight the corrupt authorities in New Delhi. On the first day of his fast, there were no more than 300 people around him, but the cameras framed the fast in such a way that it gave the impression that something big was going on.

Among his core supporters there were several impoverished poets whose laments were chiefly against “people who go in cars” and “people for whom there are big shiny roads while the poor have nothing to eat.” In short, their laments were not only against politicians, but also against the newly prosperous middle class.

At the time, the television news media, which are largely headquartered in New Delhi, had very little understanding of Mr. Hazare, who is from the western state of Maharashtra. Until last April, his influence was confined to rural parts of Maharashtra. By the time the anchors asked the important question — “Who exactly is Anna Hazare?” — it was too late. They had already proclaimed him a modern saint, and he had amassed millions of supporters in a matter of days. As it turned out, Mr. Hazare is not a man the urban middle class would normally call a saint.

Mr. Hazare has in the recent past supported the anti-migrant stand of Raj Thackeray, whose outfit, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, has frequently assaulted migrants from north India in Mumbai. The novelist Arundhati Roy, accusing Mr. Hazare of tacitly backing right-wing violence, asked in an article in The Hindu: “Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People?”

After the media’s canonization of Mr. Hazare, his utterances and actions slowly began to expose him as a very different man from what people had been led to believe. He praised the chief minister of Gujarat State, Narendra Modi, for “rural development” even though the image of Mr. Modi in the national conscience is of a man accused of having a role in the killings of hundreds of Muslims in communal riots. On a television show, Mr. Hazare recommended amputation and death for the corrupt. He has also said that drunkards should be flogged. And last month, when he was asked to comment on the government’s plan to allow foreign investments in the retail sector, Mr. Hazare compared foreign retailers to the East India Company, which once colonized India. He said: “The British came here for trading and commercial purposes and ruled this country for 150 years. How could the government forget it?”

It was exactly men like him from whom India had liberated itself in its struggle for modernity.

Also, he has declared that in the approaching state elections he will campaign against the Congress party — even if this means supporting other corrupt politicians. His priority, he has stated, is to punish the Congress for not passing his version of the Lokpal bill.

So a movement that was born in a farce has ended in a farce. But Mr. Hazare, despite the erosion of his credibility, still has support in the middle class because of its deep hatred of politicians. Also, the people who have walked long distances holding candles and wearing “I am Anna” caps are embarrassed to admit that they were wrong. They want to believe that a revolution can clean India of corruption, even though some of them have most likely done things like bribe nursery school officials to secure their children’s admissions.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “Serious Men.”

@ The New York Times